The present application generally relates to manufacturing of semiconductor products. More particularly, the present application relates to predicting measurement values of features of the semiconductor products being manufactured.
A semiconductor chip or wafer (i.e. a collection of semiconductor chips) takes about three months to manufacture. While manufacturing the semiconductor chip or wafer, thousands of measurements are obtained, from sensors attached to manufacturing equipment, to monitor quality of the semiconductor chip or wafer being manufactured. At each manufacturing step, 5% or 10% of total wafers being processed in the manufacturing step are sampled to obtain the measurements (e.g., area, yield rate, speed, etc.). A manufacturing step of a semiconductor chip or wafer includes, but is not limited to performing: deposition, etching, lithography, doping, etc.
Under current solutions, a user cannot determine whether that semiconductor chip or wafer being manufactured is going to result in a semiconductor chip or wafer that is in compliance with its product or performance specification, or a semiconductor chip or wafer not complying with its product or performance specification.
As knowledge about potential issues relating to a product being manufactured, while it is being manufactured, is advantageous for quality control purposes, it would be highly desirable to be able to generate or obtain predictions of future measurements of a product currently being manufactured, as it is being manufactured, so as to better assess that product's ultimate performance related metric and viability for commercial use.